The newly coined term is part of a novel campaign by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to make jaded customers on the city's buses and underground trains stay alert to terrorist threats—despite a slew of false alarms and no new attacks since September 11, 2004.

Sumpnspicious—a play on the slang pronunciation of "something suspicious"—is defined as "n. (noun) unattended package or odd, unusual behavior that is reported to a bus driver, train operator ... station manager or Metro Police."

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." -- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee

Good job, Washington. Way to get everyone sumpnspicious of their neighbors and fear and alienate anyone who looks or acts differently and report them to the police. Then they get harrassed just for being the way they are. I think the terrorists are winning.

by the way, how do you pronounce this? I say it something like /sup'?m/ + spicious ( ? =glottal stop) to mimic the 'urban' dialect. clearly its not /sump In/ +spicious ?

It does sound very '1984' to report others, but then we are in a '1984' world, everyone trying harder and harder to be top rat, (ever hear the expression, about the rat race? even if you win you're still a rat...). Government doesn't really govern us, we do, when we quit being decent human beings we run the risk of having the government try to govern us.

Perhaps citizens of the US - and the rest of us as well - would be advised to compare the efforts of the present US administration (with the help of an unusually compliant media - cf the Libby-Miller scandal) to scare the beejeezus out of everybody with the words uttered by FDR in his first inaugural address on 4 March 1933 :

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

. . . Henri

From the explanatory notes to the speech:

. . . And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”

The first paragraph of the speech:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

These words ring with the encouragement needed by a population in a time of war. However, Roosevelt was not addressing war, but rather life in the US during the Great Depression, with rampant unemployment, people losing homes, farmers losing family farms, "only material things" that make a momentary gas crisis pale in comparison. The Europeans had good reason to fear the rise of National Socialism (although open hostilities were six-and-a-half years away, the death camps only about a year after that) and the Chinese likewise had good reason to fear the Japanese, who (although the Rape of Nanking was still four years away) had already established a puppet regime in Manchuria in 1932. Americans, however, were not physically threatened in 1933. Our first turn came on December 7, 1941.

Henri, I'm not sure how to convey to you the depth of feeling about 9-11 in the early days after the attack. There are many of us who may not agree with all that our present Administration does, but make no mistake about this: I believe the vast majority of ordinary Americans would probably have been ready to nuke all of Afghanistan, and perhaps even the entire Arab, or even Islamic, world, on 9-12. Cooler heads prevailed.

I'll leave you with one example of the type of gallows humor we saw after 9-11:

A father and son were visiting the empty crater left in New York as a memorial after the 9-11 attacks.

Son: Dad, what happened here?

Father: This is were a group of Arabs crashed two airplanes into the Twin Towers and murdered over 2,700 people on September 11, 2001.

Son: Dad, what's an Arab?

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

Larry, I think we can all be glad that, to quote your phrase, «cooler heads prevailed» after the 11 September 2001 attack on the WTC, and the Pentagon, if by that you mean that the US nuclear weapons arsenal was not unleashed on Afghanistan, the Arab world (of which, of course, Afghanistan is not a part), or the whole Islamic world. There are a lot of things about those attacks which I have never been able to understand, the most important being the behaviour of the USAF from the time - 08:21 hrs - when American 11 (the first plane to crash into the WTC) turned off its transponder and the flight controller notified his supervisor that something was wrong to 10:03 hrs when United 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. But leaving that aside for the moment, some things do seem well established ; for example, that 15 of the 19 hijackers on the four flights were from Saudi Arabia, two from Egypt, and two from the United Arab Emirates ; i e, none were from Afghanistan (which, as I said above, is not an Arab country) and none from Iraq. If countries were to have been held responsible for this criminal act, it would seem to me that the most likely candidates would thus have been Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. But those «cooler heads» to which you refer decided otherwise, and war, even though not nuclear - let us be thankful for that ! - was unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq, hitherto killing about as many US persons (and wounding vastly more) as the 11 September attacks themselves and about 50 times that number of Iraqis and Afghans....

My conclusion is that the «cooler heads» had another agenda in mind—one in place long before the events described above - and were swift to mobilise the fear and the anger that the attacks had given rise to in the US public to move that agenda forward. One of the major foreign aspects of this agenda, as the article to which a link is provided above shows, was that of rewriting the map of Southwest Asia; domestically it was to turn the US presidency into an imperial institution in open violation of the Balance of Powers doctrine enshrined in the US Constitution (for good reasons - its writers had had direct experience of George III). How near to that goal these cooler heads have come can perhaps be best understood be reading Professor David Cole's piece, What Bush Wants to HearA Consideration of John Yoo's The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 in the 17 November issue of the New York Review of Books. All this has been possible in large part due to fear (and anger, an equally poor counsellor when it come to policy) ; I think FDR and the US Founding Fathers would recognise the situation....

M. Henri Day wrote:Larry, I think we can all be glad that, to quote your phrase, «cooler heads prevailed» . . .

Henri, we are all glad, believe it or not.

. . . for example, that 15 of the 19 hijackers on the four flights were from Saudi Arabia, two from Egypt, and two from the United Arab Emirates ; i e, none were from Afghanistan (which, as I said above, is not an Arab country) and none from Iraq.

Yes, and Iranians, such as their current President (with whom a small goup of 52 has their own issues) who is calling for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth, are Persians, not Arabs. And if the Shah had taken up the French on their offer to arrange a "lethal accident" for Khomeini, the Ayatollah would have died an embittered old man in France, and the son of the Shah, with the help of SAVAK, might still be upon the Peacock Throne, 52 Americans might not have been held hostage, and Ted Koppel might be just another late-night news anchor.

If countries were to have been held responsible for this criminal act, it would seem to me that the most likely candidates would thus have been Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. But those «cooler heads» to which you refer decided otherwise, and war, even though not nuclear - let us be thankful for that ! - was unleashed on Afghanistan . . .

And yes, Afghans are not Arabs either, but the Arab(unblessed be his name now and until forever), born in Saudia Arabia from a Yemeni family, who instigated and financed the attack, had long been given sanctuary by the Taliban, which makes them complicit in the 9/11 attacks as well as earlier attacks by his gang of henchmen. President Clinton tried to get him there once, but it took too long to re-target a cruise missle in those days. If George W. had been President at that time, he, too, would have sent a million-dollar missle into an empty tent.

and Iraq, hitherto killing about as many US persons (and wounding vastly more) as the 11 September attacks themselves and about 50 times that number of Iraqis and Afghans.... . . .

We lost many more during WWII than we did at Pearl Harbor, but I don't know anyone who thinks we should have said "OK, Japan, maybe it was our own fault. Would you like us to give you some more steel so you can rape the rest of China when you're finished with Nanking?" Perhaps we should start funding Hezbollah (حزب من الشيطانة, although perhaps they should be called by their correct name, حزب من الشيطانة, to whom they should go)?

. . . My conclusion is that the «cooler heads» had another agenda in mind - one in place long before the events described above - and were swift to mobilise the fear and the anger that the attacks had given rise to in the US public to move that agenda forward. . . .

"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me!"

. . . domestically it was to turn the US presidency into an imperial institution in open violation of the Balance of Powers doctrine enshrined in the US Constitution (for good reasons - its writers had had direct experience of George III). . . .

Which is one reason we have quadrennial elections and the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

Yoo notes that while the nation has been involved in approximately 125 military conflicts, Congress has declared war only five times.

I'm aware of that. For Father's Day about two years ago I received a copy of Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot. It's an excellent read. You, in particular, Henri, would like U. S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler in his later years. (Even I didn't know about the White House Putsch until today!)

. . . All this has been possible in large part due to fear (and anger, an equally poor counselor when it come to policy) ; I think FDR and the US Founding Fathers would recognise the situation....

Henri

I'm not worried about an Imperial Presidency. If the White House doesn't change hands next election, it will some other time. Plus, we always have our ace in the hole: the Second Amendment.

Of course, when it comes to World Domination and oppression of Third-World peoples, we've yet a lot to learn from the Masters: Spain, France, Germany, and the Mother Of All Empires, Britain.

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

well said,Larry, I compliment you on this post. Henri can never know what the toppling of the WTC does to all in this country, no words could ever make him understand. It is a strike to our very heart, not so much the commercial aspect of the trade towers but yes, attack our livlihoods is an attack at our every breath, but the visciousness of it and the audacity, the cruelty, well I cannot convey its essense, I can only hurt deep inside forever.

but I don't know anyone who thinks we should have said "OK, Japan, maybe it was our own fault. Would you like us to give you some more steel so you can rape the rest of China when you're finished with Nanking?"

but I don't know anyone who thinks we should have said "OK, Japan, maybe it was our own fault. Would you like us to give you some more steel so you can rape the rest of China when you're finished with Nanking?"

Because China was too large a game to let Japan monopolise it.

Not only China but all of Southeast Asia. China was not a colony in the sense that French Indochina was. Southeast Asian had been carved up by the Europeans long before, but China, as it turned out, was too large a game to be monopolized; even the Soviets lost control of China's home-grown Reds.

I'm not trying to pick on Japan, just using her as an example of the times in that particular area of the world. As the great (IMMHO) American author Mark Twain once said, "Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

Larry, the important points that you and Flam and Katy have raised merit an equally serious response, but I find myself a bit too tired just now - it's been a very long day - to do the subject justice. Please permit me to take a short, to coin a phrase, beauty-sleep cheque and return to this matter tomorrow. And thanks also to BD for showing us the example of our sister the moon, even though I don't think I'd translate «rischiari» quite the way Larry has done....

M. Henri Day wrote: . . . even though I don't think I'd translate «rischiari» quite the way Larry has done....

Henri

For some reason SYSTRAN couldn't translate that word at all, but recognizing a commanality with chiaroscuro from my Fine Arts classes, I parted it into two words in SYSTRAN to get it translated as "ris clear," but used the whole word in WordReference.com. It was only a short jaunt from WordReference.com's:

rischiarare:rischiarare v make light rischiarare v clear (clear up)

to "light up," which the moon does to the night sky. Not the first time I've ever been wrong making a subjective judgement, and certainly not the last (I'm sure you, of all people, will agree, mon ami! ).

Just remember the old joke about trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual.

Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."